Will C. Wood students win Phoenix Spark challenge at Travis Air Force Base

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Will C. Wood engineering students Hunter Hess, 16, and Aidan Onisko, 15, explain their entry in the Phoenix Spark Challenge to United States Air Force Col. John Klein, Travis Air Force Base commander (left) and his command chief, Chief Master Sgt. Steve Nichols. The two students were representing Wood, who won first place for their design of a remote system that wirelessly monitors the runway lighting on base.
Joel Rosenbaum — The Reporter

Hunter Hess, 16, a junior at Will C. Wood makes a final adjustment to the model of their entry before judging began in the Phoenix Spark Challenge Thursday at Travis Air Force Base. Joel Rosenbaum — The Reporter

Nearly 40 students from high schools around Solano County visited Travis Air Force Base Thursday to present special projects for the first Phoenix Spark Challenge.

United States Air Force Capt. Ryan McGuire, one of the event organizers, explained that Phoenix Spark is a grass roots innovation program that was created as an after school club for like-mined individuals to come together to solve problems.

Each team — partnered with the Solano County Office of Education and the Solano Economic Development Corporation — was given a choice of three challenges that were pulled from three areas of interests already circulating on base, McGuire said.

The challenges:

• Airfield Lighting Check: Design a system that saves time by remotely and wirelessly checking the lighting on the runway.

• County-Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS): Design a system that can deny UAS (commonly known as drones) entry into airspace.

• Self-Driving Bus: Design a driverless vehicle capable of carrying 15 to 20 passengers with luggage to and from the passenger terminal.

A team of five Will C. Wood students were among the teams competing to design an airfield lighting monitoring system. They worked after school for the past two and a half months to finish the project.

“Our design uses a computer to detect a drop in amperage. It will send a bluetooth signal to a phone to notify maintenance teams of an outage,” explained Aidan Onisko, 15, a sophomore. “Normally (maintenance) would have to go out and drive around to see if a light is out and there is hundreds of lights out there and you’d have to check every single one.”

Onisko expounded on his project’s design.

“With our design it would be simple, easy, it would pop up and let them know that on tower 18 there is a light out, they’d go out to the tower and replace it,” he said.

Another member of the team, Hunter Hess, 17, a Wood junior stated that due to the size of the base, that the once installed it would, “In theory work on a 4G network and that the computer installed on the light pole could detect the outage and send a notification to a set phone number.”

Before judging began, Solano County Superintendent of Schools Lisette Estrella-Henderson praised the students.

“The young people here today, are just amazing,” she said and added that the skills the students used to make he project happen included creativity, collaboration, communication and “really thinking beyond what we have today.”

When the judging was complete, the Wood team took home first place in their category with a team from Vanden High School finishing second.